Maybe yes, Maybe No ...

It's been a while since I have had anything to say.  In a way that is not exactly true, my head is so completely full with so many thoughts but at the same time feels like it is full of cotton wool.  It is actually really hard to find one thought and turn that into something that makes sense.

Life is still a challenge, I actually think this is really the new normal for now at least.  Physically I am doing much better.  In fact my physio thinks I am nice and strong now.  I am still quite dizzy most days and my balance is still not quite there but overall from where I was to where I am physically she is really happy.  I need to keep doing what I am doing and keep using the stick so that I don't fall over  if I have a dizzy spell.  I also read that I have had a huge blow to my independence and that is for now my Dr does not believe that I have the cognitive function to hold a Drivers Licence.  While at the moment this doesn't feel so bad, I know that the reality of that will set in one day when I am feeling a bit better and more aware and want to just drive.

The big uphill climb is my mental health.  Apparently I had my 29th session with my psychologist this week, I say apparently because I am still very much living by my journal writings.  If it is not written down or recorded in someway then for now it pretty much hasn't happened.

Life can be pretty difficult when you live through other people filling in your gaps and reading over journals.  It can be really hard to piece together what is happening and why.  What I do understand is that this form of amnesia is called dissociative amnesia and is predominantly related to anything that relates to me and my place in the world.  The amnesia, balance, dizziness and the headaches that I seem to have written about a few times are forms of protection.  My brain is still very much operating in safe mode and does all of these things to in a sense force me to stop and sit and feel.

Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder is the formal diagnosis (with a pretty decent side dish of depression, anxiety and PTSD.)  FNSD can be a really confusing term but essentially if we think of the brain as a computer this is a software issue not hardware.  Continuing with that analogy for me the amnesia is a lot like that all of my memories for a very, very long time have been sitting in my working RAM and nothing has been adequately processed and filed away.  This is the process that I need to do now and I am in the fortunate situation of having a lot of love and support around me to be able to do this while my brain is in safe mode.  Unfortunately, the process is going to be long and quite possibly emotionally painful for me.

I am not 100% sure why this has happened or why I didn't ever process events in my life properly.  What I can say is that perhaps there will be no reason for this, perhaps there will, perhaps I will never know.  For now though I need to try to learn to sit with fear, the fear and uncertainty of the future, the fear of processing the past, the fear of letting go and not controlling everything, you name it I most likely have some fear surrounding it.  This goes for the good things too.  I still get incredibly anxious about life, seeing people, going out and about, I suspect a lot of this is attached to the amnesia issues but for now we don't know.  What I know is that I am climbing out slowly of the hole I have found myself in but first I need to dig through all the dirt that has fallen in and cover over the hole and be open to what will come.  This for me is probably the hardest part of all the unknown and that the end of my story is not written.

I will leave you with this Chinese Proverb:



hugs 
Cathy xoxo

For more information about Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder